Day 5 | Living the Lord’s Prayer

Read: Matthew 6:5-13

5 “When you pray, you mustn’t be like the play-actors. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on street corners, so that people will notice them. I’m telling you the truth: they have received their reward in full. 6 No: when you pray, go into your own room, shut the door, and pray to your father who is there in secret. And your father, who sees in secret, will repay you.”

The Lord’s Prayer

7 “When you pray, don’t pile up a jumbled heap of words! That’s what the Gentiles do. They reckon that the more they say, the more likely they are to be heard. 8 So don’t be like them. You see, your father knows what you need before you ask him.

9 “So this is how you should pray:

Our Father in heaven,
may your name be honored.
10 May your kingdom come.
May your will be done,
as in heaven, so on earth.
11 Give us today the bread we need now;
12 and forgive us the things we owe,
as we too have forgiven what was owed to us.
13 Don’t bring us into the great trial,
but rescue us from evil.

Consider:

Jesus’s teaching on prayer continues the theme of trust as the mark of a heaven-plus-earth person. Jesus instructs his followers to pray in secret, unlike those who pray out in the open, hoping to garner public acclaim.

The relationship between the praying person and the Father who hears is intimate. Jesus contrasts this with many pagan prayer practices of the time, which “heaped up words” in a bit of sympathetic magic, where if one got the combination of words correct, then maybe the gods would grant your request. It’s not like that for us, Jesus says. Our heavenly Father knows and hears our hearts even when, and maybe even especially, when we have no words to articulate our desires.

That, of course, raises the big question that people regularly ask. If God knows what I need, why should I bother praying? What purpose can our prayers serve if God knows the world's needs perfectly?

Here is part of the mystery of being human for God. We are called to be image bearers, the people through whom God's will is accomplished in the world. God works in the world through wise, obedient humans. The individual praying person is at the heart of this new way of life Jesus brings about because it aligns us with God’s intentions.

When we pray, we put ourselves at God's service, aligning our wills, and are enabled, mysteriously, to bring God's will to bear on earth as in heaven. The fact that God knows what we need doesn't mean we shouldn't pray for it. It means we should celebrate that God knows our needs and pray in God's will. The knock-on effect of not heaping up many words in prayer is that it opens space for us to listen in prayer to what God is trying to tell us. We may hear God confirming our prayers or redirecting them, but always taking the energy of your original prayer and (re)directing it into what God is interested in.

God knows what you need. When we pray for something God knows we don't need, we must be prepared to say, as the Lord's Prayer says, “Thy will be done.” Jesus himself had to pray that prayer in Gethsemane. We should expect nothing less.

The Lord's Prayer is at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps so Matthew can demonstrate that becoming somebody who learns to pray and live this prayer is the heart of what it means to follow Jesus.

The rest of the prayer clues us into what it means to recognize God as our heavenly Father. It means honoring the name of God. It means submitting to God’s will, even in the tough times, as Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane. It means in the very immediate future, trusting that God, in the present interplay between heaven and earth, will provide “our daily bread,” will “forgive us our trespasses,” will protect us from temptation, and will enable us to do the same to and for the world around us.

Reflect:

What are your typical intentions when you enter into prayer? How can the context of the Lord’s Prayer within the Sermon on the Mount strengthen your relationship with prayer? This week, be attentive to how God might redirect the energy of your prayers to bring the kingdom of heaven on earth further.